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android architecture

Android Architecture Components – Looking at Room and LiveData – Part 1

This week at Google I/O 2017, there were a lot of new announcements for the Android Platform. One of the announcements was the new architecture guidelines for Android! This is a welcome addition to the Android platform. Previously the Android team refrained from giving advice as to how you should structure your Android applications. For […]

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android android-things Conferences

Speaking at the App Builders Conference in Switzerland – 2017

Speaking at App Builders Switzerland this past week on Android Things was an invaluable experience, I had such a fantastic time. Besides the conference, I got to do a bit of sightseeing. I was able to take a day to explore Zermatt and experience a lot of snow! Unfortunately the Matterhorn wasn’t visible but this […]

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android android-things firebase

Electricity Monitoring App – Send Push Notifications using Firebase Cloud Functions

This week Firebase launched a new and VERY exciting feature called Firebase Cloud Functions. It makes Firebase even more powerful than before, by allowing you to trigger functions when certain events happen. Events can be any of the following things: Data changes on Firebase Realtime database nodes. Authentication Changes Analytics Changes Cloud Storage Changes and […]

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android-things

Android Things – Electricity Monitoring App

For those who may not know, I live in beautiful sunny South Africa (see my tweets for lots of awesome pictures). A few years ago we battled with a lack of electricity. While “load-shedding” is not so common these days, we have numerous unplanned outages. We even have a few of apps that give out schedules when the […]

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android android-things

Android Things – Building a Distributed Piano with Nearby Connections API

In the previous post, we had a short introduction to some hardware basics for the Software Engineer. We learnt about some different components and how to create a blinking LED with Android Things. In this blog post, we will learn to build a distributed piano with Android Things, a Piezo Speaker and Google’s Nearby API. I made a […]